National Crayon Day

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet…no, this isn't just a list of all of the colors of the rainbow, but rather just a few of the more than 400 different shades of crayon colors that Crayola has produced since its humble beginnings in Pennsylvania in 1903! What a perfect opportunity to celebrate the bright and colorful addition these simple wax sticks have made to the world with National Crayon Day!

Crayola began its life as a company in 1885 when cousins Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith took over a pigment business that Edwin's father had previously owned. By 1903, the cousins had created a set of colorful drawing sticks for young artists by combining paraffin wax with non-toxic, kid-friendly pigments. While children had often used chalk or paints for drawing, those were both messy. Crayola came up with their brilliant solution–and it has lasted for more than a century!

The name Crayola seems to have come from a combination of two words created by the founder's wife. It combined craie, which was French for "chalk" and oily, to create the company's brand name.